The University of Georgia is officially in a panic over dropping minority enrollment, but their frantic efforts leave one wondering whether or not they're willing to consider the idea that perhaps the nation's best African-American students just aren't interested in UGA:
The number of African-American freshmen enrolling at the University of Georgia this fall is lower than at any time in recent history, despite efforts to increase the number of black students.
Only 202 black students are expected to enroll as first-time freshmen when the flagship university opens next week for the fall semester, according to the UGA admissions office. That's a 26 percent decline from fall 2003, when 273 black students enrolled as freshmen. And it's fewer than in 2001 — the year after a federal judge ruled UGA could not use race as a factor for admissions — when the university enrolled only 207 black freshmen.
That's not a huge shift. Downwards, yes, but is it a trend? The graphs suggest the numbers have never been as high as when UGA was allowed to use race in admissions, but did anyone really expect them to be? It's not as though no African-American freshmen are enrolled.
UGA ranks below Georgia Tech, Georgia State, Georgia Southern and nearly all of the Southeastern states' flagship universities in percentage of African-American freshmen.
Black students made up 23 percent of the freshman class enrolled in Georgia's 34 public colleges and universities in fall 2003. This fall, Georgia Tech expects its freshman class to be 6 percent African-American. Georgia State University's black enrollment is expected to top 30 percent. Almost 12 percent of the fall 2003 freshman class at the University of North Carolina were African-Americans. At South Carolina, 10 percent of the 2003 freshmen were black.
Sounds to me like black freshmen are going where they want to go. GSU and USC are located downtown in bigger cities. UNC offers startlingly low tuition for in-state residents. Maybe black students just don't feel like moving to small-town Athens to attend UGA. (Let me say for the record that I've visited Athens, and I loved it. But it wouldn't be for everyone.)
Black enrollment has been affected on a national level by tuition increases at public universities, declining need-based financial aid and abandonment of affirmative action policies, said Robert Atwell, president emeritus of the American Council on Education.
Basing admission on test scores is often unfair to minority students, Atwell said.
"It is clearly the case that higher education competition on the basis of the test scores of entering students works against low-income and minority students," he wrote in a report released last month. "To determine human potential requires more than testing."
Yes, it does, but as we can see by the other stats presented above, admission based on test scores doesn't seem to be getting in the way of minorities attending schools other than UGA. I've always felt that it was wrong to assume that test standards must be lowered across the board for minorities, and I still think it's wrong. The surreal denial that the SAT score means anything can be seen in the statements below:
[UGA] admissions officials say they also examine applicants individually, weighing their potential benefit to the campus in addition to academic criteria.
A student who has shown particular determination to pursue higher education, for example, might be admitted despite slightly lower SAT scores and high school grades. The university also tips the scales slightly to favor students who would be the first in their family to attend college or who would offer a talent that might benefit the school...
"We have kids with better than a 1300 [SAT score] we've said no to, we've had kids with a 4.0 [GPA] we've said no to," McDuff said in an interview last month. "We have kids with an SAT of 900 that we've admitted."
There's nothing wrong with choosing students based on who the school feels would most benefit from UGA's scholarship. But bragging about admitting people with below-average SAT scores is just silly. That doesn't mean the school is more appreciative of the "whole person;" it just means that the school is willing to lower academic standards for applicants of a certain race or background (it's a guarantee that no rich or white student could get in with a 900 on the SAT), who now stand a greater chance of flunking out than if had they gone someplace with less rigorous coursework.
I think UGA should be doing everything it can to attract qualified applicants of all races and backgrounds. Admitting students who are the first in their family to go to college is great. But please, UGA, don't admit them unless you can prove they have a chance in hell of graduating; otherwise, it looks like you're just giving lip service to diversity to keep that tuition money coming in.